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Leonard Schapiro, writing on Stalinism, warned us that 'the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade. But to produce a uniform pattern of public utterances in which the first trace of unorthodox thought reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.' [...]

Instead of asking 'How should we deal with this crisis?' the powers that be asked an almost religious question: 'How should we bail out Greece, Ireland and the others without seeming to violate the no-bailout dogma?' It only takes a second's thought to realize that by posing the second question rat…

[...] Bewildered Europeans caught in a permanent downward spiral and devoid of democratic control over those whose decisions determine their lives are turning inward and blaming themselves. Back in the Middle Ages, when the Black Death hit Europe, most Europeans genuinely believed that the plague w…

[...] The essence of that sorry treaty was not so much that it crushed Germany economically and caused Germans untold collective pain, but that, in the end, it was an own goal: a terrible deal even for the victors--a self-defeating punitive act that John Maynard Keynes understood early on and the r…